The Other Dave wrote:I recently read The City & The City by China Mieville. I'm not actually such a huge fan of Mieville - "urban fantasy" doesn't do much for me, and I found the Bas-Lag books more than a tad overwrought. The thing about The City & The City, though, is that Mieville having written it is sort of a red herring. In the end, it's not really a fantasy novel at all, and everything is explicable without relying on magic (well, aside from the magic of psychology and social conditioning, I guess). Rather than urban fantasy, it's instead a really good post-Soviet Eastern European police procedural with a neat psycho-political twist. Good stuff!

Never read any Mieville....no wait, the "Moby Dick hunting giant moles from trains" one? Did I finish it? Can't remember. Noticed there was a Mieville book in the school library of all places. Japanese of course, probably a bit over my head.

...and now his Head was full of nothing but Inchantments, Quarrels, Battles, Challenges, Wounds, Complaints, Amours, and abundance of Stuff and Impossibilities.....Cervantes, Don Quixote

I've been reading stuff that may not float the boats of most board members, but are up my alley...

Worm - the first digital war - the story of the Conficker virus (I'm sure we all remember that one! What? Just me? OK.... )Brute Force: Cracking the Data Encryption Standard - the story of how DES was cracked. Good cryo-history read.

This evening I read:Harry Potter and the Potrait of what Looked Like a Large Pile of Ash.It's a short excerpt written by a predictive text program that was fed the Harry Potter series. It is absolute genius!http://botnik.org/content/harry-potter.html

Has anybody else tried The Southern Reach trilogy, by Jeff Vandermeer? Book 1 was made into that netflix film Annihilation (which was very good, btw)

I've recently finished the trilogy, and they're...well, certainly good books. Well written, and very thought provoking. A bit too thought provoking, in fact. In fact, what da hell are they actually about? Anybody? Answers on a postcard, or later in this thread, please, cos I'm stumped. And I tried looking up other folks' ideas online. Ended up researching semiotics...

1. not like the movie. At all.2. Lovecraftian. Kinda.3. Make a very good attempt to show what might happen if humanity encountered a species that was totally unlike us. Like. Totally.4. Creepy.5. A bit too open to interpretation for my liking. I likes me a neat bow around my storylines, thank you very much.

Has anybody else tried The Southern Reach trilogy, by Jeff Vandermeer? Book 1 was made into that netflix film Annihilation (which was very good, btw)

They've been on my radar for a while but I haven't picked them up yet - that sounds right up my alley, though, sort of Danielewski-esque (if you haven't read House of Leaves, you should, although its own Lovecraftian (kinda), creepy, and open to interpretation vibes are dialed all the way up to 11).

Got to say I'm piqued too. I don't think I've read any sci-fi since, I think it was TOD who pointed me at "Blindsight", a great, great, first contact story. Come to think of it, I don't think I've read anything since....... the complete works of H.P Lovecraft followed by some P.G Wodehouse last year I think......

...and now his Head was full of nothing but Inchantments, Quarrels, Battles, Challenges, Wounds, Complaints, Amours, and abundance of Stuff and Impossibilities.....Cervantes, Don Quixote